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When I test a client's website in dnschecker.org it shows 3 IP addresses. Is this something to do with how amazon hosts websites? Other sites I check have only one.

Paul Murphy
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  • That is called "round-robin DNS" and adequately explained on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round-robin_DNS and not Amazon specific (Amazon's Route 53 DNS provides arguably much better solutions than such "simple" round robin DNS) – Bob Jan 16 '20 at 21:09
  • Great, I understand. So if I were to change the A record in route 53, should that successfully repoint the DNS to the new IP, bypassing the round robin DNS, or do I need to change three A records? – Paul Murphy Jan 16 '20 at 21:15
  • Did you set the DNS for this site? How is it hosted? Whoever did set three IPs in the A record. That's perfectly acceptable, as the commenter above indicated. – Jim G. Jan 16 '20 at 23:09
  • I inherited the setup - and am moving away from AWS for now. There are two A records in route 52 - an alias to a load balancer, and an alias to the www address. I’m just trying to find out will changing the two A records in route 53 be enough to move away, or do I need to do anything else. Delete the load balancer, change the NS and SOA records etc. – Paul Murphy Jan 16 '20 at 23:21

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This answer summarises the comments above, so people don't come in and try to help, as it's not marked answered.

Multiple A Records

Multiple A records is round robin DNS, a type of load balancing. It relies on the client making requests based on round robin, rather than just using the first entry.

Moving away from AWS

To move away from AWS you simply delete your current public records (A / Alias) and put in new A records with the new IP address.

Backups

Suggest you export all data from the instances, databases and data, or even do a backup of the instance you can keep outside of AWS. You'll want something like Restic or Macrium reflect, as AWS doesn't make this easy.

Cleaning an AWS Account

Next I suggest you stop your EC2 / RDS instances, but don't terminate them, in case something goes wrong with the new website. After a few days of the new website working you might create a snapshot of your EC2 instances / backup of your RDS instances and delete the instance, as snapshots are cheaper than instances. After a month you may want to delete all resources in AWS, to save the cost. There will probably be resources all over the place - EC2 / RDS snapshots and backups, S3 buckets, lambda functions, etc. Cleaning an AWS account could be tricky, so if it's not required for something else just close the account.

Tim
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